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As much as I dislike these sorts of things, and cop/cop-related interactions for a myriad of reasons anyway, there's no reasonable way to claim that simply because a person says he's going to get up, in contradiction to a direct order, should mean that the person getting up heard right or is following directions.
Now it may very well be that the police officer told the guy to get up. but we have to ask ourselves whether officers generally, or even rarely, request suspects to get up off the ground. No, they tell them to get down, stop moving, or some variant of quit moving until I come over and move you myself. And most people who have had the unpleasant misfortune of being accosted by the police know this.
I suspect that this driver hasn't had that experience too often in his life, if ever. I don't know the hows or the whys of his involvement in a 100+ mph police pursuit, but I am confident that when the chase ended, the driver probably thought to himself that the gig was up. He'd stand up, dust himself off, and take his lumps (figureatively or literally, who knows) and be done with the stupidity of the situation he probably accidentally got himself into due to a stupid split second decision that he was laying there regretting. And he was almost positively laying there thinking about all this through a haze of pain and discomfort. So it's not unreasonable to think that he may or may not have heard the police officer at all, much less whether he said to do or do not get up. And it seems to me that someone in that situation would think to himself that he just needs to make his intentions clear: hey man, I'm just going to get up, ok? and think that's good nuff. because after all, he's one of the good guys, one of us, just a regular joe going about his business after a car accident.
But the cop doesn't know this. He could be a non-regular joe. He could be Clyde for all the cop knows or cares. So up comes the perp, and POP goes the gun. In about a second. Or, take out your trusty stopwatch and time yourself saying this as fast as you possibly can: How long do I have before he shoots me? or shorten it to "How long"
What's your watch say? How long did you have?
But all this happens fairly regularly in the region I live in. too often to be comfortable. anyone watching the news over here on a daily basis would know not to do what the driver did. that even if the cop does say, get the fuck up, you say, goddamn bro, I can't move. watch, I won't move a fucking finger until the ambulance comes.
so that's my input on the situation. what it really boils down to in my mind are a bunch of emotional responses to watching someone get shot. Someone we'd like to trust (war vet) being mishandled by someone we'd like to trust (the cop). but I suspect not a lot of people on this board have ever been on either end of a police gun.
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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